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The ETMS Approach to a Healthy Diet
here’s a great deal of truth in the old adage, “You are what you eat.” In fact, modern research is proving that we can tailor
our diets to influence our genes. Maintaining health through diet is one of the central principles of the Eclectic Triphasic
Medical System (ETMS). The ETMS dietary approach is unique, in that it weaves together the core principles of traditional
dietary wisdom and current scientific research to offer a comprehensive health supportive diet that can be easily modified for
individual needs.
The ETMS Dietary toolbox applies various diagnostic lens that review the host, the microenvironment, and the disease (in
cancer, for example, the cell type, characteristics such as gene mutations and growth factors, and the location). All of this must
be considered when creating a personalized diet.
Every calorie we ingest either fuels the inward energy that creates, nourishes, and heals every cell in our bodies, or is used to
generate the outward energy that helps us act in the world. A nutrient dense, phytonutrient rich diet provides the building
blocks to create healthy cells, produces balanced energy, and helps reduce the toxic waste by-products that cause inflammation
and cellular damage.
I. ETMS Dietary Guidelines: Getting Started
Our bodies are designed to thrive on a varied diet of whole,
unprocessed foods: fresh vegetables, fruits, and herbs; proteins
from sea and land animals; naturally grown and processed
grains and beans; and fermented foods. Despite regional and
cultural differences, traditional diets throughout the world
are all based on some combination of these basic foods.
These foods are tied to our human evolution—they are the
nourishment that has kept us healthy for eons.
With an abundance of foods to choose from, we have the luxury
of crafting the perfect health-supportive diet. The ETMS
approach creates a comprehensive diet for each individual
that takes into account geographic location; season; energetic
type (deficiency/excess, yin/yang, organ system weakness);
traditional diet (ethnic background/taste preferences); the
presence of chronic and/or acute conditions; nutrigenomics
(diet-gene interaction); lifestyle (work/exercise); and
environmental influences (toxic exposure).
Ideally, you’ll have the opportunity to work with an ETMS
trained practitioner who can help guide you in the process of
creating your optimal diet. There’s a lot you can do on your
own, though.
The philosophy of the ETMS diet is based on the Four Golden Rules of Eating:
Quality: Eat a whole-foods diet rich in fresh, organic or wild, and preferably local foods whenever
possible.
Balance: Eat a balanced diet filled with a variety of fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and seeds
and a moderate amount of high-quality protein and fats.
Quantity: Don’t overeat to the point that your total daily caloric intake greatly surpasses your calorie
expenditure.
Relationship: Have a healthy relationship with the food you eat; enjoy it and be thankful. Eating healthy
food, grown from the earth and prepared with love, sustains both body and spirit.
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Twelve Basic Tips For Creating A Healthful Diet:
1. Incorporate an abundance of food from plant sources, including fruits and vegetables, whole grains, whole-grain
breads, beans, nuts, and seeds.
2. As much as possible, choose organic, locally grown foods and wild-harvested foods, including wild greens such as
nettles and dandelion, wild berries, and wild mushrooms. Strive for a rainbow of colorful fruits and vegetables, and
focus on those richest in phytonutrients: dark leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, root vegetables, bitter greens,
tomatoes and other fruiting vegetables, berries, grapes, and pomegranates.
3. Use olive oil as your principal fat, and eat olives daily. Other healthful fats include organic pastured butter and
coconut oil (in moderation), avocadoes, and fresh nuts and seeds.
4. Eat moderate amounts of high-quality dairy products (organic/pastured goat, sheep, and cow) in the form of yogurt
and mostly hard cheeses.
5. Consume moderate amounts of fish, eggs, and, if desired, organic poultry. Choose wild caught or sustainably raised
seafood; canned fish (sardines and salmon) are also acceptable.
6. If you are a red meat eater, eat it only one to three times a week, unless you are iron deficient; then you can eat it a
few times per week until iron levels reach normal. Consume only grass-fed, organic meat or wild game meat, not
commercially raised meats.
7. Your total calories from fat should range between 25 and 35 percent of your daily diet, with saturated fat
comprising 7 to 10 percent of your total caloric intake.
8. Eat fresh fruit as a typical daily dessert, limit sweets with a significant amount of sugar and saturated fat, and
choose sweets made with whole grains and whole-food sweetening agents such as raw honey. For those wanting
to avoid caloric sweeteners, use stevia or Lo Han, a medicinal fruit used in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Dark
chocolate (at least 70% cocoa) is rich in antioxidants and has proven health benefits when eaten in small amounts
(approximately 1 ounce daily).
9. Consume fermented foods daily; including fermented dairy products (kefir, yogurt),
pickled vegetables (kimchi, sauerkraut), and miso. Probiotic foods support beneficial
intestinal bacteria, aid digestion, and support immune function.
10. Drink a moderate amount of wine with meals (one to two five-ounce glasses
per day for men and one glass per day for women).
11. Season your food liberally with fresh and organic dried herbs and spices; most
culinary herbs have potent antioxidant and anti-tumor activity. Herbs and
spices also add wonderful flavor to food.
12. Drink pure water (spring or filtered) and a variety of teas as your
primary beverages. Black, green, and herbal teas are a good source
of phytochemicals and antioxidants. Coffee is also rich in unique
phytochemicals; limit consumption to 2-3 8-ounce cups daily and avoid
highly sweetened specialty coffee drinks.
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Powerful Protective Compounds Found In Foods
Allicin
garlic
Beta glucans
mushrooms, oats, onions
Calcium D glucarate
apples, grapefruit, grapes, bean sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage
Carotenoids
beets, carrots, kale, red peppers, sweet potatoes, yams
Cucuminoids
turmeric
Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG)
black and green tea
Ellagic acid
cranberries, pomegranates, raspberries, strawberries
Geraniol
lemongrass
indoles and isothiocyanates
broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, collards, kale
Isoflavones
fermented soy (miso, tempeh, tamari), clover and alfalfa sprouts
Limonene
citrus juice and peel
Lycopene
tomatoes and other red fruits and vegetables
Omega-3 fatty acids
fish, flax oil, walnuts
Polyphenols
black and green tea, rooibos tea
Selenium
Brazil nuts, garlic, maitake and shitake mushrooms, salmon
Sulfur
eggs, chives, garlic, leeks, onions, shallots
Planning Your Daily Meals And Snacks
There is much more to the relationship between food and health than simply calculating the minimum daily requirements of
protein, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. Plant foods contain many hundreds of compounds called phytonutrients
that produce multiple beneficial and synergistic effects to suppress chronic disease, promote optimal health, and extend life. An
important action of these foods is that they activate cellular defenses in response to oxidative damage as well as inflammation,
thereby potentiating cellular antioxidant and/or detoxification capacity.
Category 1
This category includes super-medicinal foods rich in phytonutrients that help protect against cancer and other
degenerative illnesses. Aim to have these foods make up 20 to 25 percent of your diet. Examples
are broccoli sprouts; wild greens such as watercress and nettles; wild berry concentrates
such as frozen acai or huckleberries; pomegranates; chlorella-dense supergreens; and
green barley grass. In addition, anthocyanin-rich extracts from bilberry (Vaccinium
myrtillus), chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa), and grape (Vitis vinifera) have
potent protective properties.
Category 2
Use the following categories as a guide to planning your optimal daily diet:
These foods are generally very good for you but may not be considered super
concentrated and medicinal. Wild salmon and tempeh are great choices for protein and would
fall into this category. A wide variety of organically grown fruits and vegetables, especially
those that are brightly colored—dark leafy greens; bright orange carrots, winter squashes,
and yams; and deep red, blue, or purple fruits, such as blueberries and plums—are all
category 2 foods. Strive to have these foods make up 35 to 50 percent of your diet.
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Category 3
These are neutral foods—neither healing nor really bad for you. Hybrid commercial
whole-grain products, such as whole-grain wheat crackers, or 50 percent whole-wheat
bagels, are examples of the kinds of commercially prepared foods that fall into this
category. A category 3 meal might consist of egg salad with lettuce and tomato on
whole-grain bread, made with commercially prepared mayo and commercially raised
eggs. Neutral foods should comprise at most between 10 and 25 percent of your diet.
Category 4
These foods do not promote health but do not destroy it, either. Category 4 should always
be kept under 10 percent of your diet but does not need to be an absolute zero. Foods such as
whole-grain sweets and semolina pasta fall into this category.
Category 5
This includes all foods made with white sugar, bleached white flour, or hydrogenated and
trans fats. These are poisonous substances and should be completely avoided. Most candy,
commercially made baked goods, potato chips, fried foods, blackened meats, soda, and
salad dressings made with soybean oil fall into this category and should be eliminated from
the diet.
II. Beyond The Basics
Variations in genetic makeup, gene expression, and ethnic background contribute to our individual nutritional requirements.
Other factors include how well we digest, absorb, and utilize nutrients and the total amount of food we need to function
properly. Conversely, nutrition can alter both gene expression and variations in our genetic makeup.
For these reasons, a cookie-cutter approach to nutrition is not the best way to support health and healing. The following
considerations will help you construct a way of eating that will optimize your health and vitality:
Know Your Ancestral Heritage
There are a number of factors that determine a person’s
unique nutritional requirements. One significant and often
overlooked factor is a person’s ancestral heritage, which takes
into account classic Darwinian principles of evolution and
adaptation. Over thousands of years of evolutionary history,
people in different parts of the world developed very specific
dietary needs as an adaptation mechanism, in response to
many unique aspects of their habitats and lifestyles—including
climate, geography, vegetation, and naturally occurring food
supplies.
For example, people from cold northern regions
of the world
have historically relied heavily on animal protein, simply
because that’s the primary food source available to them.
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Thus, they have radically different nutritional needs than
people from tropical regions, where the environment is rich
in vegetative diversity year round.
In general, if you are of Northern heritage, you will likely
thrive on a diet that contains a greater proportion of animal
protein. If you are of Southern European, African, or Asian
descent, you will probably do better on a diet that contains
more fruit and grains. It’s important to also consider your
current locale: Living in Florida or in a tropical country is
more conducive to eating a diet containing more raw foods.
In contrast, living in Alaska or any other cold weather locale is
conducive to eating more warming cooked foods.
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Eat Foods In Season
As much as possible, plan your menus around fresh foods,
including seasonal produce and foods that are local to your
region. Not only do fresh, local foods in season taste better,
they’re better for you. Food that has traveled a long distance or
that has been sitting on a shelf or in cold storage has lost much
of its vitality, nutritional value, and flavor.
Fruits and vegetables eaten when they are in season
conveniently provide the nutrients most needed during that
season. Strawberries and tomatoes, for example, are harvested
during the summer and contain antioxidants that offer
protection from excessive sunlight. Root vegetables, which
are harvested in the autumn and winter months, are rich in
complex carbohydrates that provide fuel to keep the body
warm during the cold winter months. In the spring, bitter
greens such as dandelion, mustard, and nettles stimulate gentle
detoxification after a winter of heavier foods and sedentary
living.
The following foods are especially beneficial when eaten in
the appropriate season:
Spring: Asparagus, beet greens, broccoli,
dandelion greens, kale, leeks, mustard greens,
peas, rhubarb
Summer: Berries, cherries, cucumbers, eggplant,
figs, green beans, melons, nectarines, onions,
peaches, radishes, sweet peppers, tomatoes
Autumn: Apples, cranberries, mushrooms, nuts,
olives, parsnips, pears, persimmons, plums,
pomegranates, potatoes, pumpkin, walnuts
Winter: Artichokes, broccoli, cabbage, citrus,
collards, kale, onions, sweet potatoes, winter
squash
Consider Your Energetic Type
Everyone has an energetic type defined in terms of deficiency/
excess, yin/yang, and organ system weakness. These are
primary diagnostic tools used in traditional methods of healing,
including Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda.
Although precise evaluation is best left to health practitioners
who are familiar with the subtleties of energetics, in a very
broad sense you can consider yourself to be more deficient if
you tend to be easily chilled, suffer from poor digestion, and
have low energy. Excess, on the other hand, is characterized
by heat, inflammation, and irritability.
There are a few basic guidelines that can be employed when
considering energetic type. For those who are deficient, a diet
of mostly cooked, replenishing, easily digestible foods (such
as curries, fish, and bone broth) is best. Those who have
conditions of excess will benefit more from a diet that contains
a greater proportion of raw, cooling foods (such as salads,
yogurt, and fruits). Of course, these modifications should be
considered within the framework of the basic ETMS dietary
guidelines.
Most people do best with a blend of raw (cold), cooked
(warm), and spicy (hot) foods, herbs, and spices. A cleansing
diet tends to emphasize raw foods, whereas a building diet
emphasizes warming foods. A balancing diet is about 50/50
divided between raw and cooked foods.
Managing Chronic or Acute Conditions
Tailoring dietary recommendations for chronic or acute
conditions provides the body with the precise nutritional
support needed for healing. It is best not to generalize and
to consider each person with cancer or any other condition
individually. For example, many theories on diet therapy for
cancer emphasize a raw food diet. A consultant needs to discuss
with a client what is practical and plausible for them, what
they like or crave, and the nature of any religious or dietary
preferences or restrictions. As mentioned above, eating raw
versus cooked food depends on ancestral heritage, energetic
type, locale and climate. Optimizing metabolic health (such
as blood sugar stability and adrenal health) are also essential
considerations in eating for health and recovery.
Further Considerations
Crafting an optimal health supportive diet is an evolving process. While the basic 12 dietary guidelines remain the same, changes
in locale, lifestyle, and health require dietary modifications such as those noted above. For more information on creating a
healthy diet, you can read more at donnieyance.com, including: The Truth About Grains; Should You Eat Soy?; The Pros and
Cons of Coffee; & Eating Healthfully on a Budget.
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